Literacy and Development: Ethnographic Perspectives

Brian Street The Ramphal Institute in collaboration with Education International, Belgium presents a Symposium on the theme:

“Education and the Sustainable Development Goals in the Commonwealth and Beyond: Shifting the Discourse” When: April 26 – 27th, 2016 Where: Hamilton House, Mabledon Place, London WC1H 9BD, United Kingdom. Headquarters of the National Union of Teachers

Abstract for Presentation by Brian Street

Literacy as Social Practice; implications for international policy

In international policy, adult literacy has remained low on the development

agenda, even though data from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) show

that 757 million adults and 115 million youths still ‘lack basic reading and

writing skills and millions of children are dropping out of school with insufficient

reading skills’ (UNESCO, 2015b). And where literacy has been addressed, mostly

for children and schooling, 'literacy experts' and planners have made prior

assumptions about the needs and desires of beneficiaries that link with these

statistical surveys based on ‘skills’ and ‘effectiveness’, themselves measured

through statistics of skill outcomes, attendance etc., Ulrike Henimann from UIL,

Hamburg, whose particular research interest is on recent developments in

conceptualising literacy from a lifelong learning perspective, has recently

pointed out some shift in Unesco policy: ‘Innovative approaches to literacy and

adult learning are being analysed, promoted and disseminated through

publications and UIL’s online Effective Literacy & Numeracy Database’

(http://www.unesco.org/uil/litbase/). I can call upon these recent publications

to update us on the debates in the field.

In this presentation for the Ramphal Institute, I mainly focus on literacy and

ethnography and their implications for policy. The ethnographic approach links

to recent theoretical approaches to literacy (see note below) in general that, I

argue, are very relevant to the discussion about development programmes. From

this perspective, literacy is defined not just as a set of uniform 'technical skills' to

be imparted to those lacking them – what I have termed the ‘autonomous’ model

(Street, 1984) - but rather that there are multiple literacies in communities and

that literacy practices are socially embedded (Street, 1993, 1995; Heath, 1983,

Barton, 1994; Barton & Hamilton, 1999). I will also call on the work of a number

of ethnographers of literacy projects (see footnote below). The ‘academic’

research emerging from this new field of interest is thus of considerable practical

significance, with implications for literacy programmes in particular and

development programmes more generally. This presentation is given in that

spirit of engagement between theory and practice, academic and applied

concerns. It aims to make a contribution across the divide, in clarifying

conceptual issues and enhancing knowledge on the one hand and in aiding policy

making and programme building on the other.

Literacy and Development: Ethnographic Perspectives

Brian Street

Headings: Introduction; Literacy as Social Practice; Unesco etc Policy Statements;

SDGs etc; UK organisations eg Uppingham Seminar 2016 ‘Adult Learning And

The Sustainable Development Goals’; eg BALID; Conclusions; plus Footnotes

including ‘Other conferences on this theme’ and ‘forthcoming publications’

Introduction

A number of literacy projects in recent years have taken forward a more

social view of literacy and of learning than has been evident in the dominant

policy perspectives, stressing that before launching into literacy programs and

interventions it is necessary to understand the literacy practices that target

groups and communities are already engaged in (Freebody, 1994; Prinsloo and

Baynha, 2013; Yates, 1994;). Researchers trained in field work methods and

sensitised to ways of discovering and observing literacy practices on the ground

have conducted studies into these everyday practices and their relationship to

the programmes designed to alter them. Their findings are now being included

from the earliest stage in projects (Yates, 1994; Prinsloo and Breier, 1996) and

fed into the campaign design and development. Similarly, Alan Rogers, (who is

organising an Uppingham Seminar ‘Entitled Adult Learning And The Sustainable

Development Goals’ from 7-9th April this Year) – see below), has also written

extensively on this issue. In a recent paper for the Unesco Journal Prospects, for

instance, he writes: whilst ‘there is an individual cognitive component to

learning (see Abadzi in the same Prospects volume) … there is also a social

element, the learning process … always takes place in ‘situated activities.

‘Without the social interaction, the cognitive would not take place; and the form

that the cognitive process takes is shaped by the ‘situated activity’ of which it is a

part’. This work, then, emphasises ‘the social dimension of learning to read’, a

theme I will develop here in relation to the ethnographic perspective. .

"In recent years there has been growing awareness of the value of

qualitative, ethnographic approaches to educational research and the

contributions it can make to development planning. Ethnographic research

can be utilised at all stages of the project cycle, from project identification

to project appraisal and can help to complement more positivist statistical

surveys by revealing the cultural and social dimensions which may

positively or adversely affect how a project is taken up" (Yates, 1993)

I will also call on ethnographic approach which is concerned with attempting to

understand ‘what actually happens’. The findings of the ethnographic approach

may lead to different ‘measurement’ and claims for ‘outcomes’ and to different

curriculum and pedagogy than in many traditional programmes.

Literacy as Social Practice

I will briefly outline some of the recent theoretical issues that, I argue, are

significant for our engagement with the current Policy proposals, as in the SDGs.

In particular, I would like to suggest some theoretical and research perspectives

from the field of Literacy as Social Practice (LSP). In an introduction to a

forthcoming UNESCO Journal, ‘Prospects’, that addresses these issues (Street,

2016), I examine the challenge that authors put forward to the dominant

perspective evident in the approach of many Agencies, which we might

characterise as a ‘skills’ approach. The policy assumption on ‘skills’ is that the

’low levels of literacy’ found in many countries are the result of children not

being sufficiently brought into schooling; and the educational perspective is that

these children should be exposed to fairly standard teaching and learning

regarding reading (and writing). This perspective tends to ignore the role of

adults, focussing on schooling and children at the expense of the wider social

context, and of ‘family literacy’

The alternative perspective shifts the focus from schools and from

children and instead sees the importance of linking adults and children in a

number of different institutional contexts. This does not simply focus on ‘adult

literacy’ or on ‘schooled literacy’, as many studies do. Instead this approach

works across the boundaries, the age groups and the institutions from a ‘social’

perspective that sees reading and writing as always embedded in social contexts

whose meanings may vary rather than being uniform, as they do in the ‘skills’

approach.

Such an approach draws upon the concept of ‘Literacy as Social Practice –

LSP - (cf Street,1995) which refers to the nature of literacy as social practice, and

upon the plurality of literacies that leads to quite new ways of understanding

and defining what counts as literacy and has profound implications for how we

learn and teach reading and writing. I would like to discuss, in this context, as

colleagues from different parts of the world and from different fields meet in this

seminar, the ‘implications of the ‘social’ perspective for how we conceptualise

‘literacy and, in educational contexts how we learn and teach reading and

writing. If literacy is a social practice, then it varies with social context and is not

the same, uniform thing in each case and this has implications also for Policy, of

the kind we see in current national approaches and also such international

perspectives as those expressed in the SDGs. Whereas the UK National Literacy

Strategy, for instance, sees 'the basics' as the key focus for literacy education,

involving surface features of language and literacy, such as rules of grammar in

the traditional sense and rules for phoneme/ grapheme relations, the LSP

approach, on the other hand, shifts from such narrow views to the larger social

and ideological context. By addressing these conceptual issues, I hope to engage

practitioners, researchers and policy makers in reflexive debate about these

issues and I look forward to continuing the conversation in this seminar.

That literacy is a social practice is an insight both banal and profound. It is

banal, in the sense that once we think about it, it is obvious that literacy is always

practised in social contexts; even the school, however ‘artificial’ it may be

accused of being in its reading and writing teaching methods, is also a social

construction. The site of learning (whether at school or within adult literacy

programmes) has, like other contexts, its own social beliefs and behaviours into

which its particular literacy practices are inserted. The notion that literacy is

‘social’, is also profound in that it leads to new ways of understanding and

defining what counts as literacy, and has important implications for how we

learn and teach reading and writing. If literacy is a social practice and it varies

with social context then what is being learned is not the same, uniform concept

in each case.

The view that literacy in itself has consequences irrespective of

(‘autonomous of’) context has tended to dominate educational thinking, a view I

have described as an ‘autonomous’ model of literacy (Street, 1984). In contrast

with this view, I have posed an ‘ideological’ model of literacy, which argues that

literacy not only varies with social context and with cultural norms and

discourses (regarding, for instance, identity, gender and belief), - what might be

termed a ‘social’ model - but that its uses and meanings are always embedded in

relations of power – which is why I use the term ‘ideological’. It is in this sense, I

suggest, that literacy can be seen as ‘ideological’ – it always involves contests

over meanings, definitions and boundaries, and struggles for control of the

literacy agenda. For these reasons, it becomes harder to justify teaching only one

particular form of literacy, whether in schools or in adult programmes, when the

learners will already have been exposed to a variety of everyday literacy

practices (Street, 2016). If literacy is seen simply as a universal technical skill,

the same everywhere, then the particular form being taught in educational

contexts where often schooled literacy comes to be treated as the only kind,

becomes the universal standard that naturalises its socially specific features and

disguises their real history and ideological justifications and practices. If literacy

is seen as a social practice, then that history and those features and justifications

need to be spelled out, and students need to be able to discuss the basis for the

choices being made in the kind of literacy they are learning.

The ideological model of literacy, then, offers a more culturally sensitive

view of literacy practices as they vary from one context to another. It is about

knowledge: the ways in which people address reading and writing are

themselves rooted in conceptions of knowledge, identity, and being. It is also

always embedded in social practices, such as those of a particular job market or a

particular educational context and the effects of learning that particular literacy

will be dependent on those particular contexts. Literacy, in this sense, is always

contested, both its meanings and its practices, hence particular versions of it are

always “ideological”, in that they are always rooted in a particular world-view

and in a desire for that view of literacy to dominate and to marginalize others

(Gee, 1991; Besnier & Street, 1994). The argument about social literacies (Street,

1995) recognizes that the ways in which teachers or facilitators and their

students interact is already a social practice that affects the nature of the literacy

being learned and the ideas about literacy held by the participants, especially the

new learners and their position in relations of power. It is not valid to suggest

that “literacy” can be “given” neutrally and then its “social” effects only

experienced afterwards. I argue that many of the policy statements about

literacy that we see in the public domain fail to take account of the social

practices embedded in different contexts for learning and using literacy.

How, then, can we know about such ‘social practices’. I would argue that

an ethnographic perspective can be helpful in addressing the local uses and

meanings of literacy - what people are actually doing with reading and or writing

in specific social contexts. Rather than appealing to large statistical data sources

where the methodological validity rests on what Mitchell (1984) terms

‘enumerative induction’ based in representative sampling, an ethnographic

perspective is founded on ‘analytic induction’. Instead of looking for a

"representative" sample, the ethnographer instead looks to another kind of

inference involved when analytical statements arc made. ‘What the

anthropologist using a case study to support an argument does is to ask how

general principles deriving from some theoretical! orientation manifest

themselves in some given set of particular circumstances. A good case study,

therefore, enables the analyst to establish theoretically valid connections

between events and phenomena which previously were ineluctable. From this

point of view, the search for a ""typical" case for analytical exposition is ‘likely to

be less fruitful than a telling’ case’ (Mitchell, 1984, p. 240). Green and Bloome

(1997) and others have pointed out that such a perspective need not be

restricted to anthropologists – in fact an ethnographic perspective is already

evident in the work of many educationalists, linguists and social commentators.

Such Ethnographic accounts of literacy, then, can in Mitchell’s terms, provide

‘telling cases’ of what literacy means to different populations of users, focusing

on the cultural and institutional locations of such meaning using analytic

induction and avoiding the ethnocentrism involved in narrow, dominant

approaches.

Research in the field of Literacy as Social Practice (LSP) (Barton,

Hamilton, & Ivanic, 2000; Pahl and Rowsell, 2006; Street, 1994; 2005) – a term

that has to some extent replaced what was earlier referred to as ‘New Literacy

Studies’ (Gee, 1990) - has, indeed, addressed issues of how literacy is learned in

many different contexts, of which school is only one. By engaging in reading

and/or writing in contexts such as in communities and in workplaces, learners

come to terms with a variety of issues that they are not necessarily conscious of

learning explicitly. Alan Rogers (forthcoming), as we cite below, writes ‘The

current interest in 'lifelong learning' has directed attention to 'informal learning'

- the learning that takes place throughout life outside of formal and non-formal

educational and training programmes.’ These are terms that we may have to

learn and develop in order to elaborate on the social practice perspective and its

implications for ‘learning’.

I will now signal some of the Policy statements on education and literacy

and then cite some of the critiques, from a social perspective, that colleagues

have made, before following through further the implications of these debates

for learning literacy.

Unesco etc Policy Statements; MDGs/ SDGs etc

The Education for All (EFA) Goals: 2000-2015

In September 2000 the largest ever gathering of heads of state ushered in the

new millennium by adopting the UN Millennium Declaration. The declaration,

endorsed by 189 countries, was then translated into a roadmap setting

out goals to be reached by 2015: ‘The eight United Nations Millennium

Development Goals (MDGs) form a blueprint agreed to by all the world’s

countries and all the world’s leading development institutions.The MDGs were

designed to combat the world’s leading concerns in development by eliminating

poverty, hunger, disease and more through eight defined goals by the year 2015.

The first goal, perhaps the quintessential goal of the MDGs, is to eradicate

extreme poverty and hunger’.

According to Unesco media statements ‘The MDGs have galvanized

unprecedented efforts to meet the needs of the world’s poorest. Over halfway to

a 2015 deadline, there has been clear progress towards implementing the

Millennium Development Goals. But their overall success is still far from assured

and will depend to a large extent on whether developed countries make good on

their aid commitments’. A more concessionary statement recently said: ‘Over the

last 15 years, much progress has been made towards achieving the Education for

All Goals but despite this, they were not reached by the 2015 deadline’. And so

the countries met again to set up the SDGs …

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 2015-30

In September 2015, at the United Nations Sustainable Development Summit in

New York, Member States formally adopted the SDGs. The agenda contains 17

goals including a new global education goal (SDG 4). ‘SDG 4 is to ensure inclusive

and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for

all’ and has seven targets and three means of implementation. This goal came

about through an intensive consultative process led by Member-States, but with

broad participation from civil society, teachers, unions, bilateral agencies,

regional organisations, the private sector and research institutes and

foundations’. I will mainly focus here on SDG4 as it signals the educational and

literacy issues that we are concerned with

What are the targets for SDG 4?

Goal 4. Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong

learning opportunities for all

• 4.1 By 2030, ensure that all girls and boys complete free, equitable and quality

primary and secondary education leading to relevant and effective

learning outcomes

• 4.2 By 2030, ensure that all girls and boys have access to quality early

childhood development, care and pre-primary education so that they are

ready for primary education

• 4.3 By 2030, ensure equal access for all women and men to affordable and

quality technical, vocational and tertiary education, including university

• 4.4 By 2030, substantially increase the number of youth and adults who have

relevant skills, including technical and vocational skills, for employment,

decent jobs and entrepreneurship

• 4.5 By 2030, eliminate gender disparities in education and ensure equal access

to all levels of education and vocational training for the vulnerable,

including persons with disabilities, indigenous peoples and children in

vulnerable situations

• 4.6 By 2030, ensure that all youth and a substantial proportion of adults, both

men and women, achieve literacy and numeracy

• 4.7 By 2030, ensure that all learners acquire the knowledge and skills needed

to promote sustainable development, including, among others, through

education for sustainable development and sustainable lifestyles, human

rights, gender equality, promotion of a culture of peace and non-violence,

global citizenship and appreciation of cultural diversity and of culture’s

contribution to sustainable development

• 4.a Build and upgrade education facilities that are child, disability and gender

sensitive and provide safe, non-violent, inclusive and effective learning

environments for all

• 4.b By 2020, substantially expand globally the number of scholarships

available to developing countries, in particular least developed countries,

small island developing States and African countries, for enrolment in

higher education, including vocational training and information and

communications technology, technical, engineering and scientific

programmes, in developed countries and other developing countries

• 4.c By 2030, substantially increase the supply of qualified teachers, including

through international cooperation for teacher training in developing

countries, especially least developed countries and small island

developing States

Accompanying the Sustainable Development Framework is the Incheon

declaration, ‘Equitable and inclusive quality education and lifelong learning for

all by 2030: Transforming lives through education’ adopted by around 1600

participants the World Education Forum 2015 held in Incheon, Republic of Korea

in May 2015. ‘The Declaration represents the firm commitment of countries and

the global education community to a single, renewed education agenda…. On this

historic occasion, we reaffirm the vision of the worldwide movement for

Education for All initiated in Jomtien in 1990 and reiterated in Dakar in 2000 —

the most important commitment to education in recent decades and which has

helped drive significant progress in education. We also reaffirm the vision and

political will reflected in numerous international and regional human rights

treaties that stipulate the right to education and its interrelation with other

human rights. We acknowledge the efforts made; however, we recognize with

great concern that we are far from having reached education for all’.

The declaration outlines how to translate global commitments into

practice at a country, regional and global level. ‘Building on the legacy of Jomtien

and Dakar, this Incheon Declaration is an historic commitment by all of us to

transform lives through a new vision for education, with bold and innovative

actions, to reach our ambitious goal by 2030’.

UK Organisations on Literacy

There have been numerous conferences and meetings in the UK following

up these Unesco statements, and here I will signal some of these, focussing in

particular on the addition of literacy and education policy to the Development

Goals, in SDG4. I will signal UK based organisations working in the literacy field:

Uppsem. BALID, LETTER, UKLA, BAICE, UKFIET, RCS and I will provide some

detail on the discussions held in Uppsem and BALID.

Uppingham Seminar April 2016: ‘Adult Learning And The Sustainable Development

Goals’

The question posed by the Uppingham seminar seminar was ‘Why have

adults been marginalised in the past and what needs to be done to bring adults

more clearly into the mainstream?’ , an issue that runs through this presentation

and is crucial, I believe, to the Ramphal debate. Alan Rogers, a well-known

literacy in development researcher and practitioner, notes a) ‘the relative

absence of adult learning from the implementation of the Education for All (EFA)

and Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), b) the almost complete absence of

adults from the discussions leading up to the formulation of SDG 4; and c) the

current prioritising of children in the discussions on the implementation of SDG

4. He does note some change, such as ‘the inclusion of some adult learning

targets explicitly or implicitly’ and he also notes that ‘since 1990 the concept of

lifelong learning/education (LLL/E) has become more common in educational

policy contexts in developing countries, for instance “The new Sustainable

Development Goals confirm the importance of ensuring life-long learning

opportunities for all” (IIEP News 14 January 2016)’. This leads him to ask

whether the conceptualisation of lifelong learning/education (LLL/E) as

embracing both SDG 4 and the other learning targets would help to ensure a

greater provision for adults?’ The questions this leads to, which I think we might

also address in this conference, were ‘How can we avoid this discourse being

rhetorical? Can such a LLL/E agenda which covers both SDG 4 and the other

learning targets be operationalised and its learning outcomes measured?’

There were a number of comments on this background paper which I will

summarise briefly here as they capture some of the important points for

discussion. Dr Ian Cheffy: (29.02.16) comments that he agrees with Alan Rogers

that ‘the learning needs of adults have received relatively little attention in the

last 15 years’ and he offers an explanation from a psychological perspective:

‘Somehow I think that human survival instincts enter into this! Adults, especially

parents, prioritise children since they are the “hope for the future”. Parents want

their children to have better opportunities than they had – and this spills over

into public policy. Unfortunately it’s hard to change human survival instincts! ‘

He does, however, also offer a more ‘social’ explanation, namely ‘the desire of the

international community to focus on a limited range of specific development

goals concerning many aspects of development and not education alone, as seen

in the MDGs’. However, he does take some encouragement from the new SDGs in

that they do not reduce the focus on education to simply one of primary

schooling but are concerned now with education at all levels – lifelong learning –

a point that as we will see below Anna Robinson-Pant also recognises. So, he

states, ‘the thinking about education for all ages which was a feature of the 2000

Dakar Education for All agenda has now been integrated (with updating) into the

SDGs themselves’. He concludes on a relatively positive note, that others as we

will see, also adopt, namely: ‘This at least opens up opportunities for

international development efforts to pay attention to the needs of adults without

in any way stepping outside what are now set up as the priorities’. For instance,

he assumes that ‘the Education 2030 Framework for Action document which

was formally adopted at UNESCO in November will not be overlooked’. This

Unesco statement amplifies the ten targets within SDG4 and gives a good deal of

recognition to the needs of adults and, as Rogers and others also note, ‘an

emphasis on lifelong learning – for children youth and adults. It indicates that

within the lifelong learning framework, “special measures are needed to address

the needs of adult learners” particularly as concerns relevant skills for

employment (TVET) and basic education’.

There is, then, an important balance to be established here, between

focussing on the role of adults in relation to the schooling of children on the one

hand but also ‘the need to recognise the contribution which adult literacy makes

to children’s schooling even if it concentrates simply on parents learning to read

and write’. So, he concludes in a way that perhaps helps the Conference agenda:

‘It seems that we simply have to find a way to rise to the challenge of showing

the human capital benefits of adult education, if only because this is demanded

by the environment in which we are having to operate at the moment’. And ‘we

should certainly explore how the concept of Lifelong Learning/ education

(LLL/E) connects with adult education. Adopting that concept might free adult

education from some of the connotations which have led to its marginalisation …

and show how much adult education is taking place already (including

workplace learning) and put that under the overarching concept of LLL/E.

Dr Ehsanur Rahman, Dhaka Ahsania Mission (07 03 2016) picks up ‘The

point indicating the 'relationship of SDG 4 and these other learning targets' and

suggests that it ‘would probably need to be more thrashed out … around the

questions - Whether 'extension' is 'education'? What are the roles difference

between 'educationists' and 'extension agents'?’ he also points out that ‘the

paper does not touch upon the factors and accountability of the adult educators

in 'failing' to demonstrate enough flexibility in adult learning programmes,

packaging adult learning encompassing diverse learning needs of adults and

developing operational partnership with other sector development actors’. So,

she argues strongly, ‘This is high time to be go for a kind of self-critic exercise

around this issue.’

Another contributor to the Uppsem discussion, Mari Yasunaga follows

through the ways in which ‘Planning for the implementation of SDGs …

addresses a critical issue of interpretation of SDG4 and its translation into

action’. Again we can note the sheer range and complexity of the documents

already being produced on this theme, to which the current seminar can also

contribute. Like Alan Rogers and others cited here, she asks, ‘Why is adult

education neglected?”. And she offers further explanations: ‘some funding is in

fact made available beyond formal adult education contexts for instance to

communities, NGOs, the private sector and donors involved in grass-root level

activities, workplace education etc, about which a state and/or non-state actors

may not have a complete picture’. So an important issue here might be to follow

through the funding streams and recognise that some support is being given at

‘adult’ level even if it is not named as that. Another theme worth highlighting is,

she claims, the importance of ‘Making learning outcomes and benefits of adult

education/literacy more visible:’. Some of the recent international reports do, in

fact, show that ‘an evidence base regarding the multiple benefits of ‘education’ is

expanding (e.g. “Sustainable development post-2015 begins with education”

http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0023/002305/230508e.pdf). But as many

authors cited here also note, ‘the equivalent of that for adult literacy, for

instance, is still relatively limited.’ This, she suggests, ‘may be due in part to

complex variables which may need to be counted in connecting adult literacy and

its impacts on people’s income, livelihoods, health, environment protection, as

well as the principles of family literacy, that avoid separating adults and children

as Rogers explains .’. And for this we may need to take into account other factors

for advancing adult education. So, whilst the dominant policy perspective, as in

the SDGs, may be a general notion of “universality” in fact we may need to give

more attention to recurrent education, or adult learning and education (ALE).

Another response in the UppSem discussion is that by Professor Anna

Robinson-Pant, Unesco Professor of Education at UEA, whose work in these

positions leads her to explore the policy documents more closely and again she

advises us go question an explore more deeply some of the language used to

describe what is going on in these contexts. She does, also, note some of the

changes in such policy documents. For instance, ‘there are repeated statements

in the 2030 Framework for Action where there is a strong emphasis on gender

equality and empowerment of women and girls as cross-cutting the three

dimensions of sustainable development – for instance one heading states ‘A

world in which every woman and girl enjoys full gender equality and all legal,

social and economic barriers to their empowerment have been removed’ (see

also a forthcoming seminar on this theme Gender and the Sustainable

Development Goals: Are the SDGs Good News for Women? UNRISD Seminar on 6

April). The commitment (at least rhetorically…) to gender equality and women’s

empowerment in the 2030 agenda presents, she suggests, an important

opportunity to look at what assumptions about learning and education could

contribute to these aims. And here she draws on Alan Roger’s distinction

between informal learning and education to explore what kind of adult

learning/lifelong education might support the targets in Goal 5 (Achieve gender

equality and empower all women and girls). Adult learning (particularly

‘awareness raising’) seems to underlie most of the Goal 5 targets (eg ‘enhance

the use of enabling technology’) but is not stated explicitly.

Again the definitions and terminology need more refined attention – a

view not surprising for an academic working in the field but nevertheless

important for the policy statements’. However, the academics I am quoting here

do not necessarily all agree and in this case she wants to question some of Alan

Roger’s critical reading of the SDGs. As she puts it ‘my reading of the SDGs

(particularly as compared to the MDGs/EFA agenda) is much more positive than

Alan’s – in that I saw only two of the Goal 4 targets (4.1. and 4.2.) as focused

exclusively on children and schooling. As I consider there is a reasonable

emphasis on adult learning in the other targets, the issue for me is less around

‘the absence of adult education from SDG 4’ and more around ‘what kind of

education or adult learning is envisaged within each target?’ . Indeed, she notes

that SDG 4.7. seems to mark a significant shift away from the 3Rs and formal

skills/education with the potential to support informal and non formal learning

around ‘global citizenship and appreciation of cultural diversity’, ‘gender

equality’ etc. of the kind that Rogers proposes. And if e are looking for

explanations of why the dominant policy perspective has tended to focus on

children rather than adults, then we might look beyond narrow practical

constraints and instead examine more closely some of the ‘political commitment

(spending money on children’s education as a ‘vote winner’, p 10), both

children’s and adult education are often supported for reasons other than

learning and it seems important to look at what that other agenda (the sub-plot)

might be. For instance, changes in UK schooling like the extended day could be

seen to relate more to providing childcare (helping working parents) than to

learning. Looking at where adult learning (particularly literacy) has been

strongly supported by governments in the South, this has often been part of a

political movement (eg Cuba) or to provide employment for educated

unemployed youth in rural areas (Nepal). For many NGOs, adult learning has

provided an entry point for other development activities – valued as a way of

mobilising communities and forming groups, rather than necessarily the skills

taught/learned. And relating to her own ethnographic field research in Nepal,

she suggests that we might need to develop ‘a clearer understanding of lifelong

learning within policy debates … In Nepal earlier this year, I met with policy

makers in the Ministry of Education who explained their current commitment to

moving from an ‘EFA’ (mainly schooling) agenda to ‘lifelong education’. Their

current School Sector Development Plan (2016-22), being developed in response

to the SDGs, proposes that ‘lifelong learning and continuing education’ is one of

their four goals and discusses the desire for lifelong education increasing

amongst adults. Lifelong learning is emphasised as starting from the cradle, and

colleagues are exploring the connections between children’s and adult education

through this definition. Now that Lifelong learning and lifelong education are

more centrally on the policy agenda in many countries, there seems to be a need

for clearer conceptualisation of the terms (including how they are being used in

specific contexts).’. Issues here that we might need to pursue more closely in the

UK too as the government attempts to develop policy that, at least rhetorically,

responds to the Unesco and SDG statements.

The British Association for Literacy in Development (BALID) is another UK

organisation working in this field and also responding to policy statements and

the Committee have just sent a paper to Unesco Prospects, entitled “Promoting

literacy from the UK – the contribution of BALID” (Ian Cheffy, Juliet McCaffery,

and Brian Street to be published in June 2016).

BALID was founded in 1987 at a time when the international community

was growing increasingly aware of the need to promote literacy as a major

contributor to development. Before the UNESCO International Literacy Year in

1990, BALID came into being at the initiative of a member of staff of the British

Council, the agency which for many years has been highly regarded for its

commitment to international education. The vision was to provide an

independent forum, not linked to any particular institution, in which literacy

professionals in the UK could come together to share their knowledge and

experience of adult literacy work and so contribute to work in developing

countries through exchanging ideas and training literacy personnel. Such a

forum has proved invaluable, since it is the common experience of professionals

specialising in literacy in development that they lack easy access to a body of

like-minded colleagues. Members of BALID work in a variety of contexts, in

universities, in NGOs, or indeed work as independent literacy consultants. Some

are students, others simply have a personal commitment to development

through education based on their own experiences in developing countries.

Their conviction of the value of literacy for human well-being and development

is the common factor, which brings them together within BALID. In the UK,

BALID developed a major training course on literacy work for adults which

started in 1987 and ran until 2004. Held for two weeks on a university campus

during the Easter vacation, so that it was commonly known simply as the Easter

Vacation Course (EVC), it attracted up to 40 or 50 participants each year, mostly

drawing in overseas students studying in the UK, but also including some highly

placed literacy professionals who travelled to the UK specifically for the course.

In the past four years, BALID’s activities have centred on holding Informal

Literacy Discussions ILDs), providing an opportunity for members to meet

together and, as the name suggests, to discuss in an informal way a topic of

current interest in literacy led by an invited speaker. The first one was held in

2011, on the topic Literacy – Unfashionable and Unfundable? Since that time, 22

ILDs have taken place. Their focus has been wide ranging and international with

discussion considering literacy programmes and issues in countries in Asia,

Africa and South America as well as the UK and Australia. International literacy

policy has come under scrutiny, as has family literacy, book publishing,

multilingual education and other topics. Usually the discussions are held in a

central location in London but they have also taken place at the SIL training

centre near High Wycombe and at Redcliffe College in Gloucester. Reports on

each of the Informal Literacy Discussions can be found on the BALID website:

www.balid.org.uk. The mix of theoretical and practical presentations has been

particularly insightful and it is now planned to update and publish some of the

presentations in a book, to be edited by Juliet McCaffery and Brian Street, current

members of the BALID Executive Committee

I signal in a footnote below some of the other UK organisations also

working in this field but unfortunately there is not time to describe their work in

detail: LETTER, UKLA, BAICE, UKFIET, RCS.

Further Publications

A forthcoming paper in International Perspectives in Adult Education also updates us on the SDGs (Benavot and Lockhart, ‘Monitoring the Education of Youth and Adults: From EFA to SDG 4’ 2016, DVV International). The authors go over the policy papers we have been considering above and make a ‘call for international surveys on adult education and learning that are robust, representative and comparable’. Like many of the responses we have been considering, they note that ‘Major efforts to strengthen national capacities for data collection on lifelong learning for all youth and adults are needed’ and they suggest some ‘Lessons for improved monitoring ‘. With response to the previous EFA project, they point out, as indeed does Unesco, that ‘neither the six EFA goals nor the two education MDGs on primary completion and gender parity were met’. For instance, ‘While EFA Goal 3 on learning and life skills was to be achieved through formal and non-formal education in the vein of lifelong learning1, there were fundamental challenges in the writing of the goal: a lack of

1 UNESCO’s Learning to Be: The World of Tomorrow report (Faure et al, 1972) argued that education should be

universal and lifelong, and proposed that Member States adopt this as a meta-concept in their education policies

(UNESCO, 2015).

specific measurability and different ways to interpret “life skills”’ – and, we might add in the light of comments by Rogers and others cited above, that the conception of ‘lifelong learning’ needed some clarification. And like other contributors here, the authors offer an explanation for the failure to cut illiteracy rates in terms of the over focus on children at the expense of adults. And there is a definitional issue with regard to literacy: whilst the Belém Framework for Action defined literacy ‘as a continuum of skills that enables individuals to achieve their goals in work and life and participate fully in society, a point confirmed by the GMR, 2015’ however, the authors comment that ‘Nevertheless, there are still definitional issues and an inability to compare literacy data over time’. One such issue involved ‘Where exactly does the education of youth and adults figure in?’, a theme we have addressed to some extent above. They note that the policy perspective tends to focus on measures of a formal kind regarding, for instance, participation in formal systems, whereas in practice ‘Non-formal education frameworks are the most common sources of adult education throughout the world .. Youth and adults participate in diverse, context-specific non-formal education programmes’. And reasons for the current failure of literacy programmes are that

‘Given the monitoring critiques of EFA Goals 3 and 4, concerted interagency and inter-sectoral initiatives are needed to evaluate the parameters and outcomes of ALE in the SDG Framework. Thus far, and despite the integrated nature of the agenda, certain SDG targets are being prioritized, often to the exclusion of those related to ALE. In the absence of sustained efforts to promote indicator development, data compilation and capacity building, it will continue to be difficult if not impossible to compare and interpret adult education patterns over time and place. There are clear gaps between the level of ambition articulated in SDG4 and levels of national and international commitment to develop feasible, robust and representative ALE monitoring tools’.

Better monitoring and data collection with sharper definitions are, then,

necessary and an interesting proposal suggested by the authors is that this might include tracking individuals over time, as they move from childhood into adult life – a perspective that fits with the broader definitions suggested above that move beyond separations of schooling or of adult education and beyond narrow formal accounts of ‘skills’ at each level. This forthcoming piece, then, contributes positively to the debates raised here and indicates, as the authors conclude, that policy needs to move ‘beyond rhetoric’ and ‘towards reality’.

Conclusions; linking theory, method and policy

This brief review of the papers and seminars addressing literacy issues at

this time has highlighted a number of issues raised by different authors:

Alan Roger’s distinction between informal learning and education; and

how the concept of Lifelong Learning/ education (LLL/E) connects with

adult education;

My own emphasis on growing awareness of the value of qualitative,

ethnographic approaches to educational research and the concepts

involved in Literacy as Social Practice;

Explanations for minimal reference to adult literacy in Policy statements –

and implications of apparent (‘rhetorical’?) shift towards more attention

to this issue in recent statements

Are the SDGs Good News for Women?

The definitions and terminology need more refined attention, including

what is meant by ‘literacy’

The importance of ‘small NGOs to set up local initiatives to promote

literacy and education among particular populations and target groups.’

Footnotes

Other conferences on this theme:

Gender and the Sustainable Development Goals: Are the SDGs Good News for

Women? UNRISD Seminar on 6 April

‘Agenda 2030 is ambitious in its vision, "transforming our world", broad in its

17 goals and 169 targets, and universal in its application to all countries.

Women's rights are explicit in the preamble, and in Goal 5 "Achieve gender

equality and empower all women and girls", and are mainstreamed in several

other goals. In this journal launch event, which is a part of the UNRISD

Seminar Series, experts from the UN and academia will reflect on the SDGs’

potential, strengths and weaknesses from a gender perspective, and the

challenges of their implementation.

This is the Geneva launch of the open access Oxfam journal Gender &

Development devoted to the Sustainable Development Goals, co-edited by

Valeria Esquivel and Caroline Sweetman.

The United Kingdom Literacy Association (UKLA). Although its focus has

tended to be in the UK, as the title suggests, rather than in international

literacy projects of the kind outlined above in practice, some of the

findings from these projects are being fed in to UKLA work, a theme

highlighted in the presentations at the Association’s celebration of fifty

years in July 2016.

BAICE , British Association for International and Comparative Education

each year convenes a conference of topical importance. This year’s

conference, in keeping with the focus on SDGs, is entitled: “Achieving

equity and quality in learning: Comparative perspectives” (September

12th-14th 2016,

In alternate years, the conference is integrated into the UKFIET biennial

international conference on education and development.

Other UK Organisations

LETTER, UKLA, UKFIET, RCS

Some forthcoming Publications

Special issue of UNESCO Prospects, on learning how to read. The Editors at UIL aim

‘to present cutting-edge research on this important topic and to publish it in

June 2016’.

Benavot, Aaron and Lockhart, Ashley Stepanek (forthcoming) ‘Monitoring the

Education of Youth and Adults: From EFA to SDG 4’ in International Perspectives

in Adult Education (2016), DVV International

Some References

Abadzi H 2012 Can Adults become fluent readers in newly learned scripts?

Education Research International vol 2012

Abadzi, H 2016 ‘Turning a molehill into a mountain? Why reading curricula are failing the poor worldwide’ Prospects Edited Street, B

Archer,D 1994 'Participatory Rural Appraisal and Adult Literacy' in Ngoma,

CODE Europe's semi annual newsletter, vol. 2, no. 1 p. 11

Barrett, A, Sayed, Y, Schweisfurth, M and Tikly L 2015 Learning, pedagogy and

the post-2015 education and development agenda International Journal of

Education and Development 40: 231-236

Blunt A 1988 Education, Learning and Development: evolving concepts,

Convergence 21 (1) pp 37-54

Barton,D 1994 Literacy: an introduction to the ecology of written language,

Blackwell: Oxford

Barton,D, Hamilton,M & Ivanic., R (eds.) 2000 Situated Literacies: reading

and writing in context Routledge: London Bown,L 1990 Women, Literacy

and Development Action Aid Development Report 4, UK.

Benavot, Aaron and Lockhart, Ashley Stepanek (forthcomimng) Monitoring

the Education of Youth and Adults: From EFA to SDG 4 in International

Perspectives in Adult Education (2016), DVV International

Freebody,P and Welch,A (1993) Knowledge, Culture and Power:

International Perspectives on Literacy as Policy and Practice, Falmer

Press: Brighton

Brown, Susan; Katjavivi, Jane and Shirley Walters 1998 National Literacy

Programme of Namibia. External Review and Advisory Mission DABE,

Ministry of Basic Education and Culture: Windhoek, Namibia (unpublished

report)

Cheffy, Ian McCaffery, Juliet and Brian Street (forthcoming) ‘Promoting

literacy from the UK – the contribution of the British Association for

Literacy in Development (BALID)’ Prospects, Unesco Journal issue, on

‘Learning how to read’. April

Convergence vol 37 (3) 2004 Special Edition: ‘Education for All: Putting

adults back in the frame’

EAEA 2016 Sustainable Development Goals: from a wish list to a concrete

action plan February 2016

Gee, James P.1990 Social Linguistics and Literacies: ideology in discourse

Falmer Press: London and Philadelphia

Green, J and Bloome, D. (1997) ‘Ethnography and ethnographers of and in education: a situated perspective’ in Flood, J., Heath, S and Lapp, D (eds.), A handbook of research on teaching literacy through the communicative and visual arts (pp 181-202) New York, Simon and Shuster Macmillan

Heath,S.B. (1983) Ways with Words CUP: Cambridge

Heslop, Mandy An ‘Older Peoples’ Literacy Project’ in S. Africa

Holland,D & Street,B 1994 "Assessing Adult Literacy in the United Kingdom:

The Progress Profile" in Hill,C & Parry,K eds. The Test at the Gate: cross-

cultural perspectives on English language assessment, Longman's:

London.

Kell, Catherine 1996 "Literacy Practices in an Informal Settlement in the Cape

Pensinsula" in: Prinsloo, Mastin and Mignonne Breier (eds) The Social

Uses of Literacy Sached/John Benjamins: Bertsham and Amsterdam

McCaffery,J & Williams,D (1993) Gender and Literacy, ODA Technical report:

London

Mitchell,J 1984 "Typicality and the Case Study" pp. 238-241 in R.F. Ellen

(ed.) Ethnographic Research: a guide to conduct Academic Press: New

York

Pahl, Kate and Rowsell, Jennifer Eds. 2006 Travel notes from the New

Literacy Studies: case studies of practice. Multilingual Matters; Clevedon

Prinsloo, M and Baynham, M 2013 Literacy Studies: 5 volumes Sage Benchmarks in Language and Linguistics

Prinsloo,M & Breier,M (eds) 1996 The Social Uses of Literacy: theory and

practice in contemporary South Africa Benjamins: Amsterdam/ SACHED

Books, Johannesburg

Puchner, Laurie Women's Literacy in Rural Mali: Issues of Impact and Culture

Rassool,Naz 1999 Literacy for Sustainable Development in the Age of

Information Multilingual Matters: Clevedon

Anna Robinson-Pant Women's literacy and development: empowerment or

control? Nepal

Rogers,A 1992 Adults Learning for Development, Cassell Educational Ltd:

London

Rogers,A (1994) Using Literacy: a new approach to post literacy materials

ODA: London

Rogers, A 2016 Review of Peter Easton Sustaining Literacy in Africa:

developing a literate environment 2014 UNESCO: Paris ISBN 978-92-30-

012304 pages 295

Rogers, A (forthcoming) How Do Adults Learn To Read? A Communities Of

Practice Approach in Prospects Unesco, June 2016 Edited B. Street

Rogers, A and Street, B (2012) Literacy and Development NIACE: London

Rogers A 2014 The Base of the Iceberg: informal learning and its impact on

formal and non-formal learning Opladen, Barbara Budrich

Street, B 1984 Literacy in Theory and Practice CUP: Cambridge

Street,B 1993 ed. Cross-Cultural Approaches to Literacy, Cambridge

University Press:

Street, B (1995) Social Literacies: critical approaches to literacy in

development, ethnography and education, Longman: London

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TR95-05, National Center on Adult Literacy, University of Pennsylvania:

Philadelphia

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Global Monitoring Report 2006’ Unesco: Paris

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SAGE Encyclopedia of Out-of-School Learning, Ed Dr Kylie Peppler,

(assistant professor of learning sciences at Indiana University)

Street, B 2016 Introduction to Special issue of Prospects, Unesco Journal

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Literacy Programme in the Caprivi Region Namibia Institute of

International Education, Stockholm University: Stockholm

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in education in developing countries, available at

http://www.uppinghamseminars.co.uk/report2000.pdf

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Projects’ ms.

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Some Unesco refs

UNESCO (2013) Global Coalition for a Literate World: Discussion Paper,

Available from: <http://ttunesco.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/global-

coalition-for-a-literate-world_5-august-2013-clean-version.pdf>

UNESCO (2015a) Education 2030 Framework of Action, Paris: UNESCO

UNESCO (2015b) Education for All: Global Monitoring Report 2015:

Achievements and Challenges, Paris: UNESCO Available from:

<http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0023/002322/232205e.pdf>

UIS/UNESCO(2015) (Adult and Youth Literacy: UIS Fact Sheet. Available from

http://www.uis.unesco.org/literacy/Documents/fs32-2015-literacy.pdf.

UNESCO Global Monitoring Reports http://en.unesco.org/gem-

report/#sthash.cL9s752i.dpbs

United Nations (2015) Transforming Our World: The 2030 Agenda for

Sustainable Development, Available from:

<http://www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=A/70/L.1&Lang=

E

Professor Brian V. Street

Brian Street is Professor of Language in Education in the School of

Education at King’s College, London University and Visiting Professor of

Education in the Graduate School of Education, University of Pennsylvania. He

undertook anthropological fieldwork in Iran during the 1970's, and has since

worked in the USA, Britain, and S. Africa. He has written and lectured extensively

on literacy practices from both a theoretical and an applied perspective. In

addition to six books, he has written over 60 scholarly articles and given more

than seventy papers and presentations at international conferences. He is best

known for Literacy in Theory and Practice (C.U.P. 1984) and an edited volume

Cross-Cultural Approaches to Literacy, (CUP, 1993). A collection of his articles

Social Literacies was published by Longman's in 1995. He has also been active in

applying theory to practice, and has been involved in lecture tours, workshops,

training programmes and research on this in a number of countries - Australia,

USA, S. Africa, Canada, etc and is a member of Technical Support teams on

current Aid projects in Nepal and S. Africa. He also has connections with a

number of other UK organisations interested in education and development

issues including the UK Forum on International Education and Training

(UKFIET) and the British Association for International and Comparative

Education (BAICE); the Literacy and Development Group of the University of

East Anglia; Research and Practice in Adult Literacy (RAPAL); and the Literacy

Empowerment Through Training in Ethnographic Research (LETTER).